Peacemaker is the latest book in C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner universe. Calling it an epic series doesn’t seem to do it justice: it’s now a full five trilogies long. And Cherryh’s still not done: she’s working on the first book in the sixth Foreigner Sequence.
I don’t exactly have a short attention span, but even I would’ve thought after fifteen books in a series I’d be tired of it. But with every book she gives us a little more of the atevi and their world and their interactions with one human, and it keeps getting better.
It’s a tough series to recommend sometimes, because I don’t think you can start in the middle; you really need to start with the first book. All the relationships won’t mean as much if you haven’t been with them since the very beginning, and gotten used to how atevi act. Also there’s a lot of history and politics to learn. Every book, this one included, starts with a couple chapters of exposition. I don’t think Cherryh writes these chapters for people new to the series, I think they’re for readers who may have forgotten half of what they need to know in between books. But it’s worth it to read it: it makes all the plot twists and reveals so much cooler.
After all the exposition, though, we catch up with our main characters. Bren, the human paidhi, translator to the atevi, returns to Shejidan with his quartet of bodyguards: his aishid. I love that word. There’s a lot of connotations to it, but it basically means these four atevi are as loyal to him as it’s possible for their kind to ever be, and in his human way he’s just as loyal to them.
Technically he’s their boss, but they’re part of the Assassin’s Guild, and if they say something is “Guild business” he’s supposed to shut his mouth and keep his head down to avoid stray bullets.
The Assassin’s Guild, in the meantime, is falling apart at the seams. Several atevi have maneuvered things in the background for decades, and instead of there being nice, neat, legal assassinations, there’ve been (gasp) unfiled assassinations.
In all seriousness, that creates a huge problem for atevi. The Assassin’s Guild is the judicial branch of their world, and they only kill someone after there’s been a mountain of paperwork and deadlines and negotiations that didn’t work. (Or of someone shot at them first, of course.)
And if they’ve done away with doing things legally, and anyone tries to stop them without doing things legally themselves (which they can’t do, because the only way to clear it legally is to go through the people who just threw law out the window) then before you know it it’s a free for all and these graceful, huge, extremely well-armed aliens are taking down everything in sight.
(I call them aliens, but it’s good to remember that it’s the atevi’s world and humans are actually the aliens. The truce between them is still shaky, which is why humanity is on one island and Bren is one of very few humans allowed on the mainland.)
In the climactic scene of the book, Bren and his bodyguards walk into Guild Headquarters with a directive from the aiji, the leader of this particular (huge) corner of the world. The directive is just a ruse to get them inside; in a way they’re actually hoping someone takes a shot at them, because then they’ll have a legal right to return fire and hopefully take out the people responsible for perverting the mission of the Guild. It’s a storyline that’s been building for all of this most recent trilogy, and probably longer.
I was surprised to see them get to this point about halfway through the book; it was a powerful, shocking scene, very dramatic, and I would’ve thought it belonged at the end. It turns out that there’s more of the story to wrap up though, dealing with the young heir Cajeiri’s birthday, his father the ajii, his mother, and the little sister on the way. Not to mention his three young human friends who are visiting from the human space station that not everyone approves of.
It’s a complicated storyline.
I had my doubts when Cajeiri was first introduced, because I thought adding a second, younger, main character would just muddy the waters, or dumb down the story.
It doesn’t make anything confusing, and instead of dumbing down the story it simplifies it, puts it through the eyes of a much younger atevi. And it’s helpful. The paidhi has to deal with so many plots and histories and connections that the story can get bogged down in exposition. And then it switches to Cajeiri and he oversimplifies it for his human friends and we get the story in about three paragraphs. As much as I love how intellectual these books are, it’s nice to relax every other chapter or so.
I think my only complaint was we didn’t get to see more interactions between between Jago and Bren. They’ve been a couple since the first trilogy (…spoilers…) but all their time together in this book was completely businesslike. I’m assuming they’re still together, but I wanted the unexpected warmth we’ve seen in the past. Atevi don’t really feel love the way humans do, but Jago has an atevi equivalent for Bren; it comes out in a quiet, respectful possessiveness. I thought that was missing in this book, and at the end of the fifth trilogy I would’ve liked a reminder that despite all the huge differences between them (not the least of which is size; she’s at least a foot taller than he is) they found each other anyway.
We see a lot of other wonderful interactions though: Algini’s rare humor, Banichi’s stubbornness, the young Lord of Dur rescuing Bren from an over-talkative politician, or Cajeiri trying desperately to be mature and adult when he’s only (almost) nine.
We also get to see more of Shejidan, and a little of what it looks like when atevi get wild and party. Well, as wild as they’re likely to get. They get drunk and have fun and get in trouble the same as any other species, they’re just more imposing and polite about it.
I’d almost say they were like Vulcans, if Vulcans had a slightly more obvious sense of humor. And were taller. And much better at killing people.
There’s so much more left of this world that we haven’t seen yet, we’ve only been on one corner of the continent for fifteen books. There’ve been hints about navigating the extremely dangerous southern ocean with help from the space station, so we could get a nautical theme next trilogy. Atevi pirates? What would that look like?
We’re also still waiting to hear from the aliens they bumped into a couple trilogies back, the third species of the series. They had a rocky first meeting, but this new species might actually get along with humans and atevi when they meet again. Mostly because they’re on the run from a fourth alien species, who aren’t going to get along with anybody.
I’m more than ready for the sixteenth book.